with this post I start a blog series about Cloud computing with the objective of promoting the next evolutionary step in the history of Information Technology.

While the Cloud hype might be annoying at first sight, it indicates on the other hand the dimension and importance of the underlying fundamental challenge: IT is evolving in order to support the changing business needs. Cloud computing is agile computing. And agility of IT enables organizations to be leaders in global economy. From the very high level perspective, Cloud computing is nothing more than about sharing IT infrastructure and managing application workloads in a highly efficient manner.

Among the variety of Cloud computing definitions the National Institute of Standards definition is gaining more and more popularity:

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

This model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and 4 deployment models.

Cloud computing characteristics:

On-demand self-service

Resource pooling

Rapid elasticity

Measured service

Broad network access

Cloud computing service models (XaaS):

Saas – Software-as-a-Service

PaaS – Platform-as-a-Service

IaaS – Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Cloud computing deployment models:

Public Cloud

Private Cloud

Community Cloud

Hybrid Cloud

I think, no, I hope that the Cloud hype will reach its zenith during this year. Before Cloud computing finally enters the stage of pure productivity we will, sad to say, experience prestages like the burst of the wishful-thinking-bubble, followed by the “Trail of Tears”, and then the “Age of Enlightenment”. At the end of day, when Cloud computing has passed all these stages, it will be no longer cool meaning that it will be a mature computing model that just simply works – just like virtualization nowadays. By the way, do you remember the virtualization hype a few years ago…?

So, there’s absolutely no rush to switch to Cloud computing as soon as possible. Many companies are building cloud services today and some are more successful than others. Do you know what I mean? While some companies just try to “go cloud” and fail, others evolve a Cloud computing vision for their business first – a vision that uses Cloud computing as an enabler.